Trigger happy

ROGER Lloyd Pack was struggling with the syntax of George Bernard Shaw’s play but was definitely viewing it as a challenge. The actor who for almost 30 years has been known as Colin ‘Trigger’ Ball in TV’s Only Fools and Horses and more recently as farmer Owen Newitt in The Vicar of Dibley, not only refuses to be typecast but admits he’s "best out of my comfort zone."

ROGER Lloyd Pack was struggling with the syntax of George Bernard Shaw’s play but was definitely viewing it as a challenge.

The actor who for almost 30 years has been known as Colin ‘Trigger’ Ball in TV’s Only Fools and Horses and more recently as farmer Owen Newitt in The Vicar of Dibley, not only refuses to be typecast but admits he’s "best out of my comfort zone."

He had been rehearsing hard for the latest Royal Exchange production of Bernard Shaw’s satire Widowers’ Houses, which opened this week for what could be a popular run. "I’ve not done any Shaw before and the style of language is very precise, not like casual speech at all, so you have to enunciate and really think about delivery," he states.

Lloyd Pack is 64 and has had a lengthy career in acting. This began after a formal acting education at RADA and has taken him into a dazzling variety of roles ever since.

"I took a conscious decision early on not to be typecast because I felt this would offer me more roles and I’ve never regretted that," he explains.

It’s true that he has shone in every kind of role in theatre, TV and film, from Shakespeare to Dickens, and from Interview with the Vampire to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. But it is as Trigger, the village idiot character around Del Boy’s Peckham, that millions across the world know him. Has this been a weight to bear over the years?

"In some ways, I suppose," he admits. "You learn to deal with the stuff in the street. I’m comfortable with him, though, and he’s really a pension scheme for me, but I like to move on and do different things.

"I have turned down roles, but I’m usually fascinated by how someone else views me and try it."

His character in Widowers’ House is a rather unpleasant individual called Sartorius, widely acknowledged as the worst landlord in London.

"I like playing the baddie," laughs Lloyd Pack. "I soon find my inner nasty – I think most people have a bit of that in them – and it’s not a problem to bring it out. It’s like the devil having all the best tunes, some of the best characters are not very nice."

He also enjoyed playing Barty Crouch Snr in the last Harry Potter movie. "Yes, that was great," he smiles at the memory. "That took nine months to make and they look after you very well because of the big budgets available. It was fun – my character wasn’t so much a baddie as quite supercilious."

He doesn’t have a wish-list of roles he’d like to play, although he doesn’t fancy being in a long-running soap ("never watch them – don’t have time"). He does, however, quite often see roles on TV and think "I could have done that."

When pressed on whose roles he thinks he could take, he agrees that Bill Nighy has probably "pinched some of the parts I’d like" but he says he isn’t jealous. Lloyd Pack is basically "quite a chilled character". He’s a devotee of yoga, enjoys reading and devours newspapers – "I read as many as I can get my hands on, it’s a bit of an obsession," he admits.

He likes being in Manchester and knows the city quite well – one of his sons lives here.

Lloyd Pack says that he "always enjoys a laugh" and is a particular fan of comedian Lee Evans, although he generally prefers situation comedy to stand-up.

He may be famous for playing two particularly unworldly characters in Trigger and Owen, but he’s a down-to-earth individual who happens to be a talented actor and has no plans to retire. "Actors don’t retire," he insists, "they just stop remembering their lines."

At which point it was back to Shaw’s difficult dialogue and yet another theatre nasty.

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CHAMELEON actor Roger Lloyd Pack heads a talented cast at Manchester’s Royal Exchange for a revival of George Bernard Shaw’s biting satire Widowers’ Houses. He is best known for his small screen roles as dopey Trigger in Only Fools and Horses and lascivious Owen in The Vicar of Dibley among various popular roles, and has been seen most recently on TV in peak-time BBC comedy The Old Guys.

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